


Particles Of Light

by Measured



Category: Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-24
Updated: 2008-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 06:04:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1635458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured/pseuds/Measured
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A day in the life of Richard St. Vier and Alec Campion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Particles Of Light

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: set shortly after the end of Swordspoint as that's how much I've read (though I'm working on collecting the rest of the series)  
> Written for Brigdh

 

 

 _Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being._ -Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be

 _All the greatest things we know have come to us from neurotics. It is they and only they who have founded religions and created great works of art Never will the world be conscious of how much it owes to them, nor above all what they have suffered to bestow their gifts on it._ -Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past: The Geurmanates Way

* * *

Richard cut through the stale air and dust scattered at the tip of his sword. The length of his  
sword was grey like a winter sky, it was the color of tarnished silver, a dusty mirror. When  
Richard practiced he was more agile, his reflexes became catlike. Alec could hardly take his  
eyes off of Richard when he was fighting and bloodied. At battle he was a creature, a thing  
beyond the simple human and mortal realm. When that sword is in his hands, Richard touched a  
godhood that few had managed.

Richard twisted as the grey cat jumped away out from under his feet. It nearly lost one of its lives, but it was a lucky thing, this cat. It had survived their absences and returned often to their apartment. It played with the light that filtered through the windows and clawed at Richard in the morning. It was intelligent enough to know that between the two of them, Richard was the more merciful of the two. 

Alec looked up from the book he had perched in his lap. It was a trite, banal thing that Richard had brought back due to the cover matter. His lover might as well have brought back a simpering romance novel at this rate. Still, Alec read it. He read aloud passages of heaving bosoms and well-endowed mysterious heroes in his most deadpan voice. Richard laughed aloud when Alec did his best falsetto damsel in distress voice.

"You could've been an actor," Richard said.

"I've hardly the range," Alec said drily. "Besides, who ever heard of a poor scholar being an actor?"

"It could happen," Richard said.

"In fairytales, maybe," Alec retorted. 

Sword sheathed and dance cut short, Alec set aside the book. He had enough of soppy heroines for today. Richard stood above him, tall, dark and scarred. At night Alec had found all those scars and mapped them out with his fingertips. Sometimes they were reopened, but Richard never seemed to mind too much. His sense of pain must have dulled with the training. Alec was mesmerized at times. To think, to be completely numb to one's own physical pain. He'd once seen Richard only give a disinterested glance over a deep wound over his chest, and sheathed his sword.

Of course that only happened when the other swordsmen were good enough to hit him. Alec knew that there must have been times when the other swordsmen had gone to their deaths, far outmatched and damned to be killed before they even struck blood. 

"You're covered in shadows," Alec said.

Richard felt his face. Besides the cold, a rough patch of beard had grown over the past few days. He hadn't had it cut since the last pay of 30 pieces of gold.

Alec brought out his `sharpened blade' as he called it. He motioned for Richard to sit and Richard obeyed. Alec cradled his lover's face and he put the razor against the skin. A slip and he could cut arteries, a legendary swordsman lost due not to a sword, but a scholar with a tiny blade.

Richard was relaxed in his grasp. He made no comment as Alec brought the prepared lather and spread it over his face. When the cold blade of the razor touched his skin, Richard did not flinch. He looked up when Alec commanded and turned to every direction. When Alec had finished Richard felt over his jaw line. It was smooth, smooth enough to touch and kiss and even bite, should he wish. Richard was tolerant of any excesses that happened in bed. Any scars left from his fingernails were added to the menagerie of wounds left on Richard St. Vier. Alec liked that thought, flinty and sharp in his mind. He liked the thought of his fingers leaving a trail over his lover's body, one to last even when the day was done. He had left his mark, that would be enough.

Alec set aside the remaining lather and blade. It would have to be re-sharpened next, and he made a note to seek out the whetstone later. Richard always sharpened his own blades. There was a cautiousness to his lover, he did not trust any other with his swords. Taking those pieces of metal from him would be like removing a limb, an arm. Alec thought that Richard might have actually survived the loss of a limb better than the loss of his swords.

Alec lowered a shard of a mirror for Richard to see his handiwork. The original mirror had fractured once when Alec had mixed a drug with strong hallucinogenic properties with stale country ale. It'd taken Richard to restrain him and that hadn't stopped him from breaking the reflecting glass pane into as many pieces as he could.

The mirror still had bits of red flecked over it. Alec refused to let it be cleaned. _Maybe it will bring me luck,_ he'd said. 

Richard considered his reflection for a moment through the dust and stained blood of the shard.

"It's a good job. You could make a living of this," Richard said.

" _Please_ ," Alec said. "The first arrogant lout and I'd `slip' with the razor. My reputation would be ruined by the end of the first day." 

Richard shrugged. Obviously, this was to be another of Alec's duties, beyond the reading, writing and composing of letters. It crossed his mind that he could take to trimming as well to take off that bill. He tossed the thought aside when it came to mind that he couldn't trim his own hair and if he was going to be spending money at the barber's then Richard might as well do so as well.

On some strange impulse, Alec ran a finger down the line of Richard's jaw. It was a gentle touch, an intimate, lover's gesture that could hardly be mistaken for anything else.

Richard watched him, and seemed about to ask, for it was their unsaid rule that such things were left to the bed and to the arms of the night.

"I was checking to see. The light made it look like I'd missed a spot," Alec snapped.

"Did you?" Richard said.

"Of course not," Alec replied.

 


End file.
